Trump pardons: 100 more to go

[Badger]

S.O.P. for Presidents on their way out of the door.

Come off at Grumps. You know the scope and self-serving nature of Trump's pardon is going to dwarf historical precedent. Even Clinton's out the door pardons, which were one of the blackest marks on his administration, is going to pale in comparison. I defy you to compare the wholesale Donnie's pardon shop being open up for cash compared to Obama's far more high-minded attempts at mitigating and commuting sentences he felt were wrong.

I know you're a trumpist, but you're better than this to just go to fuzzy bear levels of denying reality.

[Badger]

Really worried about this for three reasons:

1) The shear number makes me worry that the seditionists who have been arrested will be pardoned.  I mean, how else do you hit over 100 pardons.  I don’t even have words for how bad that would be for our country on every conceivable level.  

2) I worry Trump will pardon some genuinely dangerous people who really need to be locked up for as long as possible such as Julian Assange, Robert Hanssen, Edward Snowden, Ross Ulbricht, R. Kelly, George Nader, etc just out of Matt Bevin-style spite/to distract from Biden’s inauguration.  

3) I worry he’ll pardon a lot of horrible white collar criminals like Martin Shkreli, Andy Fastow, Bernie Madoff, etc and Trumpists like Giuliani, Bannon, etc because he thinks they’ll be able to fundraise for or  provide political assistance to him in the future.  

This whole quid-pro-quo pardon business is the sort of norm-shattering that could easily do irreparable longterm damage by turning pardons into a 100% political/transactional process that Presidents get comfortable abusing in truly dangerous ways.  It’s already been abused every now and then, but this is something else.  

Couldn't agree more with every word.

For those Capitol rioters he may indeed pardon, is there any conceivable way that DC could prosecute "state"-level charges for such actions committed at the federal Capitol building?

[Badger]

The number of arrests of Capitol rioters is at like 400 now, so if it's only 100 then it won't include them. I'm sure this is just a standard batch of cronies along with a few people actually deserving of it thrown in as a 0.

I was (still am sorta I guess) worried about trump mass pardoning all the terrorists who stormed the Capitol. Seems silly now as I realize that most of these people can't afford the likely minimum 25k donation to trump's campaign or PAC, or 10K to a former trump aide to lobby on their behalf, that it would take to get one of these pardons. This list will be overwhelmingly white, male, rich, republican, well-connected, and criminal, with a few black rappers who praised trump thrown in as tokens.

I'm not so sure about that. Remember from what we've seen thus far most of these rioters had solid middle to upper middle class jobs. Podium guy was the stay-at-home house husband of a doctor. Another dude was the CEO of a suburban Chicago internet company. Then there's that rich Karen realtor from Texas.

If I was their attorneys and knowing to what degree their asses are on the line facing federal charges, I'd be having a come-to-jesus meeting with them to ask the simple question, how much is your freedom worth to you? Then start writing checks like a mofo to whichever fixer I knew could likely get the job done.

And my greatest fear is that's exactly what is happening. We get Buffalo boy, but most of the bastards escape.

[Badger]

Well, can't vouch for the accuracy of this article of course (I wonder if maybe his lawyers are leaking like a bum toilet), but here is the back story of the Trump mind if, as suggested here, Trump's pardon list is anti-climatic.

The "shocker" here, to the extent there is one, is that some Pub lawmakers allegedly sought pardons, or clemency. What? What is that all about?

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/19/politics/trump-self-pardon-warning/index.html

This would be amazing news. But again, it assumes the article is correct, and of even greater concern that our literally most mercurial and mentally unstable president in history won't change his mind in the next 17 hours.

[Badger]

The number of arrests of Capitol rioters is at like 400 now, so if it's only 100 then it won't include them. I'm sure this is just a standard batch of cronies along with a few people actually deserving of it thrown in as a 0.

I was (still am sorta I guess) worried about trump mass pardoning all the terrorists who stormed the Capitol. Seems silly now as I realize that most of these people can't afford the likely minimum 25k donation to trump's campaign or PAC, or 10K to a former trump aide to lobby on their behalf, that it would take to get one of these pardons. This list will be overwhelmingly white, male, rich, republican, well-connected, and criminal, with a few black rappers who praised trump thrown in as tokens.

I'm not so sure about that. Remember from what we've seen thus far most of these rioters had solid middle to upper middle class jobs. Podium guy was the stay-at-home house husband of a doctor. Another dude was the CEO of a suburban Chicago internet company. Then there's that rich Karen realtor from Texas.

If I was their attorneys and knowing to what degree their asses are on the line facing federal charges, I'd be having a come-to-jesus meeting with them to ask the simple question, how much is your freedom worth to you? Then start writing checks like a mofo to whichever fixer I knew could likely get the job done.

And my greatest fear is that's exactly what is happening. We get Buffalo boy, but most of the bastards escape.

Oh for sure, I'm very aware that a lot of these terrorists have the McMansion in Texas, a 50k Ford F-150, 10-20k in TactiCool^TM gear so they can cosplay as paramilitary goons (b/c they are too cowardly to join or too fat to be allowed into the military), and bought round trip airline tickets and booked rooms at the trump international hotel. Still, I don't think the vast majority of them have the liquid resources and connections necessary to play (and I was admittedly likely low-balling it by a lot with the 25K figure) the kind of big-boy ball you need to to get on trump's pardon radar. These nazi mf's are about to learn the hard truth that trump did the exact opposite of Drain The Swamp. Naked, Pay-to-Play corruption never been so alive and well in DC.

I genuinely hope you're right.

[Badger]

https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1351738781490159618

It shows just how low Trump can go when he pardons Steve Bannon and that feels almost like a relief because he had worse possibilities available like pardoning himself, his kids, or the terrorists who stormed the Capitol.

All true, but knowing Trump and not being a delusional Republican - - that is 90 + percent of them - - I refuse to breathe a sigh of relief about those worst-case scenarios until 12:01 p.m. tomorrow.

[Badger]

S.O.P. for Presidents on their way out of the door.

Come off at Grumps. You know the scope and self-serving nature of Trump's pardon is going to dwarf historical precedent. Even Clinton's out the door pardons, which were one of the blackest marks on his administration, is going to pale in comparison. I defy you to compare the wholesale Donnie's pardon shop being open up for cash compared to Obama's far more high-minded attempts at mitigating and commuting sentences he felt were wrong.

I know you're a trumpist, but you're better than this to just go to fuzzy bear levels of denying reality.

I'll reply when the pardon/commutation list is announced.  

So, Badg, are your undies in a twist with the list?

I don't know. Where is the list?

As best I have been able to determine from this thread, quite the opposite. It sounds like Trump blinked rather than doing Mass pardons of his crime family, political cronies, and most importantly of all the cop killer Lynch Mob. Not happy about Bannon, but this was far better than I could have hoped for.

Good thing we've impeached the son of a b**** (again), because his fear of the backlash is the only thing keeping him in line.

Then again, the bastard still has over half an hour to do more damage if his blood sugar gets low.

EDIT: okay, I found the list here in the thread. Not nearly as bad as I had feared. But of course in addition to including pardons from apparent over done sentences some life terms for conspiracy to distribute marijuana oh, those were conveniently out of his cover so Trump could brazenly and in a, let's get this straight beyond anything else, completely a historic and precedent shattering way, issued Mass pardons for well-connected republicans, and threw in one or two folks like Kilpatrick and the aforementioned over sentenced non-violent offenders, who lets also face it, Trump couldn't give a s*** about, as cover.

All I can say, Grumps, but if any of you or your ilk ever want to utter a single peep about so-called corrupt Clintons, as if pardoning Marc rich and Hillary's brother remotely compared to the scope and brazenness of these Mass pardons, that person needs to preemptively STFU.